The transition from this primeval Anarchy to the present condition of society has been presented by religion, both Graeco-Roman and Judaic-Christian, as the consequence of a deterioration of mankind ("the Fall"), and as a condition of punishment, which is to be followed, in a better world and after the work of life has been well performed, by another life as Eden-like as the first state of man, and eternal. But it must not be forgotten that Christianity was at first a proletarian movement, and that a great part of its adherents certainly did not join it merely with the hope of a return to the original state of Paradise in a future world. Perhaps (thought they) this Paradise might be attainable in this world. It can be seen that the Church had originally nothing to lose by at least not opposing this hope of a millennium[7]; and so we see not only heretics like Kerinthos, but also pillars of orthodoxy, like Papios of Hieropolis, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and others, preaching the doctrine of the millennium. In later times, indeed, when the Church had long since ceased to be a mainly proletarian movement, and when Christianity had risen from the Catacombs to the palace and the throne, the hopes of the poor and oppressed for an approaching millennial reign lost their harmless character, and "Millennialism" became _ipso facto_ heresy. But this heresy was, as may be understood, not so easy to eradicate; and when, in the closing centuries of the middle ages, the material position of large classes of people had again become, in spite of Christianity, most serious and comfortless, Millennialism awoke again actively in men's minds, and formed the prelude, as well as the Socialist undercurrent, of the Reformation. Some Radical offshoots of this medieval Millennialism we have already noticed in the "Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit," the Adamites, Chelcicians, and "Free Brothers." [7] Or, from the Greek, chiliad; and hence the word _chiliasm_, expressing the belief in a millennium. * * * * * The presuppositions of this flattering superstition are so deeply founded in the optimism of mankind, that it remained the same even when divested of its religious, or rather its confessional, garment; and could be no more eradicated by the Rationalistic tendency that arose after the Reformation than by the interdict of Rome or the brutal cruelties of ecclesiastical justice.